Nadira (actress)

In her later years, Ezekiel lived alone in Mumbai, India, as many of her relatives had moved to Israel. In the last three years before her death, she had been residing in her condominium with only a housekeeper assistant. On 24 January 2006, she suffered a cardiac arrest and was admitted to a hospital in a semi-comatose state; she had multiple existing health problems, including tubercular meningitis, alcoholic liver disorder, and paralysis.

Ezekiel died on 9 February 2006, at the age of 73, at the Bhatia Hospital in Tardeo, Mumbai, following a prolonged illness. As of 2013, she is survived by two brothers who each live in the United States and Israel.

Ezekiel won a Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress, for her role in the 1975 film Julie. During the 1980s and 1990s, she entered a new phase of her career, playing elderly women as a supporting actress. Her last role was in the film Josh (2000). Due to her Western attire, her character in most of her critically acclaimed movies was Christian or Anglo-Indian.

Her first major opportunity came from Sardar Akhtar, wife of film director Mehboob Khan, in the film Aan (1952); her role as a Rajput princess in the film marked her rise to cinematic prominence. In 1955, she played a rich socialite named Maya in Shree 420. She played pivotal roles in a number of films such as Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai (1960), Pakeezah (1972), Hanste Zakhm (1973), and Amar Akbar Anthony (1977); she worked alongside Shammi Kapoor in Sipahsalar (1956). She was often cast as a temptress or vamp, and played opposite the chaste heroines that were favoured at the time by the Hindi film industry.

Ezekiel's first appearance in cinema was in the 1943 Hindi-language film Mauj when she was 10 or 11 years of age.

Florence Ezekiel (5 December 1932 – 9 February 2006), known professionally as Nadira, was an Indian actress who worked in the Hindi film industry. She appeared in films from the 1950s and 1960s, including Aan (1952), Shree 420 (1955), Pakeezah (1972), and Julie (1975), which won her the Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award.

Ezekiel was born on 5 December 1932 in Baghdad, Iraq, into a Baghdadi Jewish family. When she was an infant, her family migrated from Baghdad to Bombay in search of business opportunities. She had two brothers, one of whom lives in the United States and another in Israel. Ezekiel never married.